


The Jamie Benn Club

by orphan_account



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Matchmaking, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, depending on who you ask, The Pointless Association for the Protection of NHL Players' Well-being (Sid), That Awesome Club Kaner's In (Kaner), or The Ryan Nugent-Hopkin Fanclub (Ry).</p>
<p>Basically, the club's aim is to maintain the mental and physical well-being of NHL players across the country. And Jamie's heard that love is the cure for all ailments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Jamie Benn Club

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely inspired by Brandon Sutter in appreciation of his incredible skills and wonderful personality. And also possibly by Jamie Benn, who I find highly amusing as well as a pretty damn good hockey player.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Is this the real life?_
> 
>  
> 
> No.

Halfway through the game, Jamie finds his distraction in the form of Brandon Sutter’s devastated eyes after losing a face-off. Part of him wants to tell Sutter it will all be okay, but there’s something oddly therapeutic about watching other people being miserable when he’s sulking about a particularly devastating loss. He presses pause, snaps a picture of Sutter’s face on his phone and sends it to Sid, and then he forgets all about it until he gets a call on the way to practice the next day.

 

“I am his _Captain_ ,” Sid hisses.

 

“Calm your farm,” Jamie responds, because he loves cutesy rhymes like that. “We are not making darling Suttsy our next project. Not just him, anyway.” He can feel the weight of Sid's disapproving frown through the phone line, but Jamie is American and thus immune to the blatant emotional blackmail methods employed by Canadian captains across the league. He’s also rather impressed that Sid has caught on to his intent so quickly.

 

“You had better not be talking about – ”

 

“He looks so much happier when he’s with Chucky!” Jamie gushes.

 

“I'm Zach's captain too,” Sid protests. Jamie knows Sid can't see him, but he waves away Sid's concerns anyway.

 

“Yes,” he agrees. “And isn't it the captain's duty to make sure his players are all happy?”

 

“No,” Sid replies immediately, then amends, “I mean, we do our best to make sure players transition well, but ultimately it’s up to the players themselves to adjust to the change, so...”

 

“It’s okay, Sid, I’m not the media,” Jamie assures him. “Anyway, it’s his birthday tomorrow. What kind of captain lets a player mope around on their birthday?”

 

“I really don’t think this is necessary,” Sid says, but it's weak, and Jamie knows Sid knows that too. It’s an obvious but fiercely-guarded secret that Sidney Crosby is as much of a sap as Eric Staal, and in the end all Sid wants is for everyone to have their fairy tale ending. Unless said ending involves winning the Stanley Cup, or even a single game, in which case Sid’s wishes are more important than anyone else’s, sorry.

 

“Great, then you’re in,” concludes Jamie. “Skypey-time on Friday!”

 

“Shouldn't you be practicing?” Sid snipes. “You just lost 7-4 to the Flames, of all teams, and you have to play the Canucks on Friday.”

 

As much as Jamie would like to be flattered that Sidney Crosby knows his playing schedule, Jamie is an elite hockey player who keeps to an excellent practice schedule, thank you muchly. “Don't pretend you care if we win or not,” Jamie tells Sid, and cuts off Sid's predictable reply of _but I do, you have so much potential –_ “We're not even in the same conference. And you’re an asshole, by the way. That’s fifty for the Jerkwad Jar.”

 

Sid cusses him out for a full minute before Jamie hangs up, but really, Sid was the one who had made a huge fuss over enforcing the ‘no speaking of our losses’ rule last year (admittedly, Kaner had been a bitch about it too, but still), so he shouldn't be complaining. It isn't like Sid can't spare the cash, after all, and the sense of camaraderie brought by the lockout had made the Jerkwad Jar an unreliable source of funding for a very long time.

 

The very thought of it makes him cringe, but if Jamie can swallow his pride and goad Kaner into mentioning the loss, the Jerkwad Jar will be full enough to sponsor the entire project, thus exempting the nicer members of the club from having to pitch in. Jamie firmly believes that sometimes a little sacrifice is necessary to keep his wallet as well-fed as he is.

 

 

 

As it turns out, Jamie doesn't have to say a thing.

 

"Nice assist," chirps Kaner cheerfully. "Pity I can’t say the same for your plus-minus. Or, you know, the rest of the game."

 

"At least I got an assist," replies Jamie, even though Kaner, fuck him, had one too in his last game, and a goal in the one before that. "By the way, you owe the Jerkwad Jar a hundred dollars."

 

Kaner breaks down into devastated cackling. Weird, but Jamie doesn’t pretend to understand anyone who claims they come from Buffalo. Who advertises that, honestly? "Damn you, Benn," Kaner gasps out through either sobs or laughs; Jamie isn’t sure which. "Did you lose just so I'd have to pay up?"

 

Which is completely uncalled for. Kaner knows that none of them would ever throw a game, especially not for anything so trivial, if entertaining, as seeking to maintain the general health of the hockey community. Jamie takes great delight in invoking the special exception rule and informing Kaner that the club fund is eagerly awaiting a twenty-five hundred dollar atonement fee from one of its lesser members.

 

Kaner cusses him out for two full minutes before Jamie hangs up, but really, that was crossing a line.

 

 

 

"Meeting on Friday," he tells Ry. "Skype me at seven, EST."

 

"Cool," says Ry. "Should I be alone?"

 

"As always," says Jamie, then remembers that Boychuk is friends with Eberle. “On second thoughts, can you get Eberle in too?”

 

"No problem," says Ry again. "Good luck for Friday."

 

"Thanks," says Jamie. "See you!"

 

This is why Jamie likes Ry best.

 

 

 

They lose to the Canucks on Friday, which is…not overly surprising, but still pretty disappointing, so Jamie’s glad to have the distraction of a Skype session with the club.

 

“SuperKane, reporting in,” drawls Kaner when he arrives, late and impossibly smug as usual.

 

“Seven minutes, seven dollars,” Jamie reminds him, because it never hurts to have a little more cash into the club fund, just in case.

 

“Screw you,” says Kaner darkly. “It’s seven-oh-four by my watch.”

 

“Then you’re wrong,” replies Jamie. He’s not exactly in the best of moods.

 

Ry clears his throat in that eerily loud way of his and waits until everyone is looking at him before he says, “Patrick, pay four dollars if it really makes that much of a difference to you. Jamie, stop wasting time and tell us why we’re here.”

 

“Agreed,” mutters Sid. “If you want me to agree to try and foster a relationship between two of my newest team members, you’re going to have to convince me that you’re not just trying to sabotage our chances of making it into the playoffs.”

 

Jamie Benn is prepared for anything. He switches the camera so it’s displaying his screen instead of his face and pulls up the PowerPoint he had prepared earlier.

 

“This is Brandon Sutter in various interviews during his time with the Pittsburgh Penguins,” he tells them. “He looks sad.” Flicking to the next slide, Jamie continues, “ _this_ is Brandon Sutter in various videos on the Hurricanes website. He looks happy.”

 

“Wait, this isn’t fair,” Sid interrupts. “You took the happy photos from those Ask the Canes videos. We don’t do anything like that, so...”

 

Jamie circles one smiling picture with his cursor. “Happy.” He goes back to the montage of sad photos. “Depressed. Lonely. Separated from his friends.” He scrolls to the last slide in the PowerPoint, a picture of Boychuk’s face photoshopped to make it shine like the sun. “And this here is the solution, my friends.”

 

Sid stares at Jamie in awe, or possibly disbelief; Sid’s webcam is too grainy for Jamie to interpret the subtleties of Sid’s face as accurately as he can in real life.

 

“Well,” says Kaner, after a moment of silence in deference to Jamie’s incredible powers of persuasion, “that’s good enough for me.”

 

It’s at times like these that Jamie remembers that Kaner is, very occasionally, a useful member of the club.

 

 

 

Sadly, Kaner is generally useful for a very small range of club tasks, and of those tasks, those he is willing to perform number even fewer.

 

“You look like the type who’d try it,” Jamie argues. Kaner goes offline. Jamie is reminded of all the times he’d tried to be nice to Patrick Kane and come up empty-handed. At the beginning of the season, he and Kaner had made a pact to watch selected games together, and when Sid had scored his first goal of the season, Jamie had totally thought they could celebrate together.

 

_he makes going five hole look so easy_ , he’d tweeted enthusiastically, and texted Kaner too, because Kaner pretty much checks his twitter all the time but never replies to anyone, the asshole. Except apparently Kaner had decided to renege on the bro code and go on a surprise date instead, leaving Jamie to stare forlornly at his phone all alone at home. Kaner had tried to explain that since he was technically dating a bro, the whole ‘bros before hos’ thing was null and void, but whatever, Jamie can tell when he’s not wanted.

 

Another time, at the All-Stars weekend, Jamie had been in the middle of a conversation with Kaner when Tyler Seguin had skated up to compliment Kaner for some reason, and Kaner had immediately forgotten Jamie was there. Short attention span, _sure_.

 

Anyway, Jamie’s gotten over all of that, for the most part, because Kaner can’t help that Jamie’s a much better person than Kaner is, and also because Jamie had met up with Kaner over in Europe during the lockout and healed the rift between them. There may have been a couple of punches and some yelling involved as well, but Jamie maintains that hockey players are a more physical bunch in general, and are thus more likely to resort to minor violence as a way of dealing with problems, especially since trading blows is a safe and established way of solving issues during hockey games.

 

In any case, Jamie is evidently the better person when it comes to him and Kaner, and thus also the one who is more often correct, and so Jamie thinks it is quite reasonable to expect that Kaner _trust him on this and just put on the damn Speedo_.

 

For some reason, Kaner doesn’t agree.

 

 

 

“I still think this is a waste of time,” Sid bitches. “Brandon smiles when he’s with us. You keep ignoring things that don’t support your case.”

 

“Maybe he’s somewhat happy,” Jamie allows, “but imagine what he’d be like during the honeymoon period.”

 

“And when they break up?” asks Sid. Jamie levels him with a glare.

 

“I’m very pointedly not thinking about pots and kettles,” he says, and watches Sid turn bright red. “Now help me out here.”

 

Sid sighs heavily, but he rings Jonathan Toews. “He’ll listen to you because you wear the C,” Sid says. “No, it’s not abusing your powers, so -- What? No, that shouldn’t be a problem…Think about it, though; think about the opportunities…”

 

When Sid puts the phone down, he looks faintly ill, but he assures Jamie that Toews is willing to cooperate and to expect a call from Kaner sometime over the next twenty-four hours. Before Jamie can raise his fist for a celebratory pump, his phone starts ringing.

 

“I still don’t see why I have to wear one, though,” whines Kaner.

 

“We have been _over_ this already,” mourns Jamie. “We need to make Suttsy attractive to Boychuk.”

 

“And how is having _me_ in the Speedo going to help?”

 

“Dress code,” explains Jamie. “Now you have to go and convince several other key players to join in. I’ll text you the list. Bye!”

 

“Wait -- ” Kaner begins, but Jamie has no time for frivolities. It’s taken them a whole month to wear Kaner down, and Jamie has to deal with possibly not making the playoffs on top of that. They probably won’t be able to execute the plan until after the playoffs, which means Jamie will have to wait two or three more months to see the heart-warming resolution of all the sexual tension going on between Sutter and his Boychuk.

 

 

 

The Stars miss out on the playoffs, as do the Oilers. Kaner and Sid are insufferable all the way to their respective conference finals, when they become absolutely unbearable. Jamie cuts off all communication with them and calls Ry for hours at a time to sulk.

 

Finally, _finally_ , the playoffs are over, and Jamie doesn’t even want to think about who won the Stanley Cup. Kaner wants to meet in Chicago, but Jamie honestly doesn’t think he can bear to listen to any more gloating without dropping the gloves in front of every person who even _looks_ like they’re about to mention Chicago. Besides, Sutter is in Pittsburgh, so it only makes sense to meet up there.

 

The plan, by now, has been polished to perfection by Jamie. The phone is on speaker and Jamie, Sid and Ry are all listening intently to the conversation.

 

“So, uh, me and a couple of the boys are going to the beach on Sunday. You in?”

 

Sid rolls his eyes. “Smooth, Patrick.”

 

Ry holds up a silencing hand. He and Jamie have grown thoroughly sick of the way Sid and Kaner have been chirping each other every chance they get, and if they’re too loud, Sutter might hear them through Kaner’s phone. They turn their attention back to the conversation.

 

“Sure,” Sutter says, sounding surprised but not against the idea. “Who’s going?”

 

Kaner makes a couple of sounds which mean he’s chewing on his lower lip. “Uh, me, you, the Boychuks, the Staals, possibly Skinner, Segs, Marchand, and maybe a couple of the other Bruins too. Maybe more.”

 

“Pretty interesting group,” Sutter comments. “And you came all the way to _Pittsburgh_ to go to the beach?”

 

Sid and Ry look accusingly at Jamie.

 

“Relax,” Jamie whispers. “I’ve got that covered.”

 

“Uh,” says Kaner, because he’s probably forgotten the script like the dope he is. “Oh, yeah. We all wanted to meet up, and Pittsburgh was kind of in the middle.”

 

“Huh,” says Sutter. “Good thinking. Thanks for the invite. When do I come?”

 

“Uh,” says Kaner again. Sometimes Jamie wonders how someone with such incredible hands and hockey sense can be so stupid. “Um, any time after noon, I guess? What’s your number? I’ll text you the details.”

 

If this is how Kaner picks up, Jamie isn’t surprised that Kaner’s game has been described as _brutal but effective_. It does seem like the kind of thing Jonathan Toews would respond to.

 

“Phase one, complete,” Jamie cheers.

 

“Did you say something?” asks Sutter. Sid and Ry glare at Jamie.

 

“Uh, no,” says Kaner. “I’ve got to go now, but I’ll text you.”

 

“Sure,” replies Sutter, and then Kaner ends the call.

 

 

 

They meet up with Kaner at a karaoke booth, the kind which assigns you actual ratings for how well you did, and kill some time working their way through old ‘90s hits (plus the occasional 2000 release). For someone who has so little faith in his musical ability, Sid is irritatingly good. The fourth time he and Ry lose out to Sid and Kaner’s rendition of Ricky Martin’s _Livin’ La Vida Loca_ , Jamie throws the microphone onto the couch in frustration and decides to distract himself by finding more work to delegate to other people.

 

“We need someone to make sure the plan has worked on Sunday,” yells Jamie over Ry, who’s facing off with Kaner over _Oops, I Did it Again_. He waves the camera around in front of Sid’s face.

 

“Why don’t you do it?” Sid asks, folding his arms across his chest. “Why do _we_ have to invade their privacy and take pictures of them kissing or cuddling or whatever?”

 

“Because you and Kaner are into that sort of thing?” Jamie tries.

 

“Fuck you,” says Sid. “That’s not a valid argument.”

 

Jamie holds up his hands apologetically, then grabs Ry's hands and holds them up too.

 

“Okay, fine, but it’s going to have to be you or Kaner. Girlfriend night,” he explains.

 

Sid and Kaner glare at him in unison and push the camera back towards him and Ry.

 

“Boyfriend night,” they chorus, smirking in challenge. Ry raises an eyebrow and pulls out two familiar phones. He looks up after a minute and slides them back to Sid and Kaner.

 

“Problem solved,” he tells them, and lifts his hand up for a hi-five. Jamie can’t leave him hanging; Ry's just saved his date night.

 

“Fuck all you straight boys,” gripes Kaner. “One day I'm going to learn how you do that and send embarrassing texts to all your girlfriends. Right, Sid?”

 

Sid is too busy hyperventilating over his phone to answer.

 

“What did you send Geno?” he demands. “Where are my sent messages?”

 

Jamie sighs. “He probably deleted the messages after you sent them,” he tells Sid. “Why?”

 

He leans over to see, but Sid snatches the phone away and holds it to his chest.

 

“Mind your own business,” he says. Jamie takes a moment to appreciate his life. His teenage idol is a crazy dork, and Jamie owns at relationships. His life is awesome.

 

“Patrick, get Sid's phone,” Ryan orders.

 

“Fuck you,” spits Kaner, but he's a curious asshole with no sense of loyalty to the homosexual cause, so he does as Ryan tells him and tickles Sid until he fumbles the phone.

 

“Got it,” Kaner crows, plucking it out of Sid's hands. His face falls. “Crap, I don't know his passcode.”

 

“8971, because he's a sap,” says Jamie.

 

Ry shakes his head. “7189, because Geno goes on the ice first _and_ he’s a sap.” Sid stares stonily at the table while Kaner taps in the password.

 

“This is an invasion of privacy,” he grumbles. “I should sue you all.”

 

“With a password like that, you're pretty much asking for it,” says Kaner with a shrug. Sid makes a sudden leap for the phone, but Kaner's faster, tossing it across the couch to Jamie.

 

“Aww,” coos Jamie. “ _Don’t worry. Date night last ALL night )))_ '”

 

“Wow,” says Ry. “I thought you two were saving yourselves.”

 

“It’s not like that!” Sid yells. “We watch old hockey games and marathon movies!”

 

“So that’s what they’re calling it nowadays,” Kaner laughs, and raises his fist in the air. Jamie shrugs and touches his knuckles to Kaner’s while Ry sinks onto the couch and lifts an unimpressed eyebrow. Sid’s face is redder than the Blackhawks’ regular jerseys.

 

“Alright, let’s split,” says Jamie, and vacates the building with Ry before either Sid or Kaner remember that they haven’t paid the bill yet.

 

 

 

Tyler Seguin is a beautiful human being.

 

“Rocking that Speedo,” he tells Sutter, then winks at Boychuk (Zach, not Johnny). “Don’t you agree? Check out the size of that package.”

 

“Sure,” says Zach, evidently accustomed to such talk. “He has nicer ones at home, though.”

 

Jamie flails his arms around and hugs Ry behind the palm tree. “Did you hear that? _Home_. _He has nicer ones_. This is a brilliant plan.”

 

Ry pushes him away. “Shut up and stop getting fingerprints all over the binoculars.”

 

 

 

“You two have been sitting on your asses the whole day,” Tyler continues. “Race to the water?”

 

“Sure,” says Sutter. He stands up and folds his towel away, then holds out a hand for Boychuk. “What are the stakes?”

 

“I like you,” confesses Tyler approvingly. “We’ll think them up later. Okay, go!” He takes off running but waits for Boychuk and Sutter to edge in front of him before pushing Boychuk into Sutter so they collapse into a tangled heap on the sand, Boychuk’s lips mashed against Sutter’s ear.

 

“He’s good,” says Jamie. “We should make him an offer.”

 

“He already has his own group,” replies Ry. “They have a terrible success rate, though, because Tyler keeps flirting with the projects.”

 

“That could work in some cases,” Jamie argues. “We do normal cheer-up operations sometimes.”

 

“No, they’re strictly matchmaking, so it never works,” says Ry, then thinks about it. “On second thoughts, he might be better off with us.”

 

“We’ll use this as his audition,” Jamie offers. Ry nods absently and peers harder through the binoculars.

 

 

 

“Sorry about that,” says Boychuk when he gets up, brushing sand off his stomach.

 

“No problem,” replies Sutter. “I think Tyler wins, though.” He gestures over to where Tyler is standing ankle-deep in the water, looking thoroughly disappointed. “What’s the penalty?” he asks.

 

Jamie nudges Ry in excitement. “This is it!” he squeaks. “All he has to do is dare them to kiss or something.”

 

“That would be really weird,” says Ry. “No normal dude would dare another normal dude to kiss their friend as part of a dare.”

 

“Ugh,” says Jamie.

 

“Babe, give the boy a lap dance,” says Tyler to Sutter, smirking, and Jamie perks up.

 

“Forgot we were talking about Seguin,” Ry mutters.

 

 

 

Sutter finishes off the dance with a long, slow roll of his hips against Boychuk’s thighs before he bursts out laughing, and Jamie can’t contain his excitement anymore. He leaps out from behind the palm tree, pulling Ry along with him, and runs to the new couple.

 

“What are you doing?” Kaner hisses. “You’re supposed to be hiding out with Sid!”

 

“Was I supposed to be hiding?” Sid asks. “I’ve been sitting here with Jordy the whole time.”

 

Jamie ignores them both and turns his full attention to Sutter and Boychuk. “What’s it like to be dating your teammate?” he asks eagerly. “Feel any happier?”

 

Boychuk stares at him. “What?”

 

“I was wondering what you two were doing behind that palm tree,” says Sutter. “How long have you two been dating for?”

 

Jamie drops Ry’s hand like Brandon Prust drops the gloves.

 

“We’re not,” he says hurriedly, and then in an attempt to change the subject, “but you two are now, right?”

 

“Oh, no,” says Sutter, looking like he’s about to laugh again. “We’ve both had girlfriends for the past few years.”

 

“But you live together,” says Jamie.

 

“He’s a good roommate,” says Boychuk. “Really neat and responsible.”

 

“So you’re not interested in dating each other,” Sid concludes flatly. He smirks triumphantly at Jamie.

 

"It’s hard to tell sometimes!" Jamie snaps.

 

Having been exposed as part of the planning team, Sid tries to explain himself to Sutter while Jamie watches sullenly. He’d been looking forward to this since the beginning of the season and now it’s all ruined.

 

"We thought you looked a bit down, and maybe it had something to do with the trade, but having Boychuk around seemed to help, so we thought maybe…we wanted you to be happy.”

 

Sutter, to his credit, looks more touched than amused by Sid’s elegant display of awkwardness. "Oh, no, me and Zach are just good buddies, and it’s been pretty good having him around, you know? It's hard, getting traded," he explains. "I had a lot of good buds there. But you’ve all been great. I'm happy to be here."

 

Sid looks inordinately pleased by that.

 

"You can stay here as long as you like," he tells Sutter earnestly.

 

"The scariest thing is that he probably means it," Ry whispers to Jamie after Sutter leaves. Jamie wrinkles his nose. Probably. Sid's a massive sap with no consideration for salary caps or management.

 

Kaner throws up his hands.

 

"I can't believe I missed date night with Tazer for this."

 

"Toews?" asks Ry. "I thought you were dating the other #19."

 

“Seriously?” Jamie asks. “Have you not _seen_ him with Toews?”

 

“You thought Sutter and Boychuk were into each other,” Ry says, which is fair enough, so Jamie shuts up.

 

Kaner looks absolutely horrified. "Are you talking about Thornton? Because that would explain why Johnny's been so touchy about him lately, and the fights, oh my --"

 

"No, no," Ry says. "The other one, the sexy one."

 

Kaner's face scrunches up in further disgust.

 

"Ugh, seriously, me and Seguin?"

 

Ry shrugs.

 

"You just admitted he was sexy. Also, you have Toews listed as Captain Serious and Seguin as BF #19."

 

"You said he was sexy first," snipes Kaner. “And yeah, Segs did that himself, but only as a joke. I think."

 

“I’ve been texting him dirty messages when you try to flirt with the waitresses during meetings,” says Ry, “so you’d better check to make sure.”

 

Kaner winces. “It’s Segs, he probably gets messages like that every day from that other dude, Tyler Brown, or Marchand, or whoever else he’s adopted into his posse.” He sounds thoroughly unconvinced.

 

“But he has sex with all of them, doesn’t he?” asks Sid, leaning in suddenly, and Jamie tries and fails to suppress the reflexive gasp he lets out upon hearing his hero talk about sex so eagerly. Also, Sid is such a perv. Jamie feels sorry for Malkin, sometimes; for someone who’s supposedly saving himself, Sid sure likes to talk about other people having sex a lot.

 

“Actually,” says Jamie, because this has been eating at him for a while, “how do we know this ‘Tyler’ guy actually exists? I mean, what are the chances that two guys named Tyler would be besties? And has anyone actually _seen_ Tyler Brown play hockey?”

 

“Yes,” says Kaner. “Ty kept showing me videos when we were in Switzerland.”

 

“Of course,” adds Sid. He sounds offended. “I try to keep up with these things.” Jamie’s not sure whether Sid means _other hockey leagues_ or _the sordid details of the hockey world’s gay relationships_ , but he’s leaning towards the latter. Sid doesn’t care for substandard hockey. Sid can barely stand watching substandard hockey when it’s substandard hockey with _promise_ , which is basically all the young players in the insert-letters-here-HLs.

 

“Fine, he’s probably real,” admits Jamie, “but I bet you Seguin would freak if he were hit on by a guy, for real. He’s definitely straight.”

 

“No way,” says Kaner. “He’s open to anything, with a bit of prodding.”

 

Ry raises an eyebrow.

 

“I don’t know that from experience or anything!” yelps Kaner, eyes flicking to the dark corners of the restaurant. Jamie pats him on the head.

 

“That’s right, for once,” he agrees, “because Tyler Seguin is straight.”

 

“Get out,” Sid says. “There is no way.”

 

Jamie looks at Sid thoughtfully.

 

“I know you’re going to say -- ”

 

“No.”

 

“No,” Jamie says at the same time, “but I think it would be in the best interests of the National Hockey League if we found this out for certain.”

 

Sid buries his head in his hands, but before he can say a word, Jamie adds, "jinx", because Sid actually takes things like that seriously, and Jamie welcomes anything that will stop Sid from bitching about everything for a while.


End file.
